20 Nov 2022
COPout
The world the faced climate change crisis again. And the world blinked. Again. After two weeks of intense negotiations at the annual global climate conference there was still no agreement to phase out the fossil fuels that are causing increasing destruction in the form of floods, fires, droughts and huge storms. The big coal, oil and gas producing and consuming nations refused and emissions keep rising. The best nations at the 27th Conference of the Parties could do was agree to create a loss and damage fund from high-emissions nations to at least partially compensate poor countries for climate impacts like flooding and drought. For example, Pakistan faces some $30 billion in costs after one-third of the country was flooded this year. The small South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu will likely disappear this century as the seas keep rising. The world’s climate has already warmed by more than 1C since pre-industrial times and is rapidly heading toward 1.5C, a point that climate scientists say will lead to drastic and irreversible climate changes. Despite the threat to the future of human civilization many countries continue to develop even more fossil fuel sources and to cut down forests that now store carbon.